Low point on the W curve

Today I really came to appreciate the amazing people that are on this program and I fell so lucky to have the opportunity to get to know them more.

It’s our fourth week of the home-stay and things are getting rough. Even though we all like our families, communication is still exhausting. After a long day at school, we just want to go home and relax, but then, somehow, we have to muster up the energy to patiently listen to our host parents, pick out the words we understand and try to answer. Some of us can tell that always having a “stranger” around is wearing on our host families too.

Several nights ago I felt quite fed up with my host family because they really like to help me with my homework, but always tell me the answer before I can figure it out on my own. So I decided to ignore what they were telling me. It made them mad and me frustrated.

In Thailand, the students are not taught critical thinking skills in school and lessons are learned through rote memorization. As a result, my host parents don’t always understand that I want to read my homework on my own and figure things out by myself. They expect that I want the answer told to me so that I can memorize it. Cultural miscommunications, such as that, were what caused some tensions between my host mother and me yesterday.

But last night I had a great night with my host family. I think that it had a lot to do with the energy boost I got from having felt such deep connections with my new Kalamazoo-ISDSI friends. Tonight my host parents were patient with me and I was patient with them.

Plus, I used a "Thai" way to tell my host parents how I wanted to do my homework. At one point last night my host nephew would tell me the answer before I could figure it out and I asked him to go more slowly because I needed to learn it myself. I've had the same problem with my host mother, who was standing right next to my newphew. She heard me say this, told told him to stop and has now stopped telling me the answer as well. Because I was able to be direct with my nowng (my younger) in front of my host mother…my pi (my elder), I was able to let my host mother know how I wanted to go about doing my homework, without making her feel bad.